Seeing me nod, Glenn zipped up the bag and shut the drawer, closing all of them on his way back to Vanessa. Not entirely sure why he had wanted me to see this, I trailed behind him.
Jenks’s wings were silent as he returned, and I gave him a sympathetic smile. “Don’t tell Ivy I lost it,” he asked, and I nodded. “They all smell the same,” he said, and I felt him hold on to my ear for balance as he stood as close as he could to my perfumed neck.
“Jeez, Jenks, they all look the same to me.” But I don’t think he appreciated my attempt at humor.
Glenn’s steps slowed to a halt, and we gazed at Mr. Ray’s secretary. “Those three women were suicides,” he said, “the first one dying by self-mutilation, as Mr. Ray’s secretary appears to have died. I think she was murdered, then doctored up to mimic suicide.”
I glanced at him, wondering if he was looking for ghosts in the fog. Seeing my doubt, he ran a hand over his short, curly hair. “Look at this,” he said, leaning over Vanessa and picking up a limp hand. “See?” he said, his dark fingers circling her thin wrist in sharp contrast to her pale skin. “That looks like a bruise caused by restraints. Soft restraints, but restraints. They aren’t on the woman who made it to the hospital, and I know they had to tie her down.”
Okay. Now I was interested. Maybe Vanessa had been into sex games and it went too far? Leaning forward, I agreed that the soft red ring could have resulted from a restraint, but it was her nails that caught my attention. They had been professionally manicured, but the tips were split and ragged. A woman considering suicide doesn’t pay beau-coup bucks to get her nails done, then tear them up before she can end her life properly. “Where was she found?” I asked softly.
Glenn heard my interest and flicked me a grin that quickly sobered. “Under a dock in the Hollows. A tour group spotted her before she could get cold.”
Not wanting to be left out, Jenks flew from my shoulder to hover over her. “She smells like a Were,” he proclaimed. “And fish. And rubbing alcohol.”
Glenn twitched the sheet with which she’d been covered in lieu of a bag all the way off. “Her ankles have pressure marks, too.”
My brow furrowed. “So someone held her against her will and then killed her?”
Jenks’s wings clattered. “There’s a strand of medical tape caught in her teeth.”
The breath Glenn had taken to answer me exploded out of him. “You’re kidding.”
Adrenaline pinged, and feeling woozy, I looked to see. “I’m not trained for this,” I said when Glenn took a penlight from his pocket and motioned for me to hold her mouth open. Gingerly I took her jaw in my hands. “I’m not going to take a knife to her and poke around.”
“Good.” He trained the light on her teeth. “I don’t have authorization for that.”
The squeak of the double doors pulled my head up. Jenks swore as I let go of Vanessa’s jaw, my swinging hand almost smacking him. Tension flashed to fear for an instant as I saw Denon, my old boss from the I.S., standing in the middle of the floor like the king of the dead.
“This is an Inderland matter. You don’t have clearance to even look at her,” he said, his honey-smooth voice rippling over my spine like water over rocks.
Damn it all to hell, I thought, jerking my fear back. He wasn’t my boss anymore. He wasn’t anything. But I was too deep underground to tap a line, and I didn’t like it.
The low-blood living vampire smiled to show his human teeth, a startling white beside his oh-so-beautiful mahogany skin. Iceman was behind him along with a second living vampire, high-blood this time by his small but sharp canines. The scent of burgers and fries had come in with them, and it looked like Glenn’s fifty dollars had bought less time than he’d hoped.
Jenks rose in a hum of wings. “Look what the cat dragged in and puked up,” he snarled. “It smells like it used to be something, but I can’t tell what, Rache. Fuzzy rat balls, maybe?”
Denon ignored him, as he ignored everyone he thought beneath his notice, but I caught a twitch of an eye as he kept smiling, trying to impress me with his mere presence.
Glenn clicked off his penlight and tucked it away, his jaw tensed, unrepentant. Denon wasn’t anything to be afraid of. Not that he ever had been, and especially not now. He was probably the reason I had lost my license, though, and that ticked me off.
With a practiced swagger, the large muscular man came forward on cat-light feet. He was technically a ghoul, a rude term for a human bitten by an undead and intentionally infected with enough of the vamp virus to partially turn him. And whereas living high-blood vampires like Ivy were born to their status and envied for having a portion of the undead’s strengths without the drawbacks, a low-blood vampire was little more than a source of blood as they tried to curry the favor of the one who had promised them immortality.
Denon clearly worked hard to build up his human strength, and though his biceps strained his polo shirt and his thighs were heavy with iron-pumping muscle, he still fell short of his brethren and would until he died and became a true undead. And that was contingent upon his “sponsor” remembering and/or bothering to finish the job. With Denon taking the blame for Ivy’s leaving the I.S. with me, that likelihood was looking slim. His master had turned a blind eye, and Denon knew it. It made him unpredictable and dangerous, since he was trying to ingratiate himself back into his master’s good graces. The fact that he was working the morning shift spoke volumes.
Though still beautiful, he had lost the ageless look of one who feeds upon the undead. It was likely they were still feeding on him, though. He had once overseen an entire floor of runners, but this was the second time I’d seen him working the streets since leaving.
“How’s your car, Morgan?” his beautiful voice taunted, and I bristled.
“Fine.” Anger overpowered my fatigue to make me stupid. The two techs slipped quietly out, and I heard a soft conversation and the metallic clinks of a gurney being set up.
Denon’s pupil-black eyes rose from the dead secretary. “Come to see your handiwork?” he mocked, and Jenks lit us with a burst of light.
“Move off the corpse, Jenks,” I muttered, coming out from behind the drawer to give myself room to move. “You’re getting dust all over it.”
Denon smirked, hiding his human-size teeth like the joke they were. I put my hands on my hips and tossed my hair. “Are you saying this isn’t a suicide?” I taunted, seeing a chance to irritate him. “’Cause if you say I’m responsible for her murder, I’m going to sue your little brown candy ass from here to the next Turn.”
In a smooth motion, Glenn yanked the sheet over Vanessa. He hadn’t said anything yet, which I thought was remarkable since it had been only a year ago that he thought he didn’t owe vampires any respect at all. Leave the needling to those who might survive it.
“The evidence speaks for itself.” Denon moved forward to force Glenn and Jenks back. “I’m releasing her to her next of kin for cremation. Move.”
Damn it back to the Turn, in a few hours everything would be gone. Even the paper and computer files. That’s why he was doing this at such an insane hour. By the time everyone was at work, it’d be too late. Eyes narrowing, I forced a laugh. It was bitter, and I didn’t like the sound of it. “Is that what you’re doing now?” I mocked. “You been bumped to clerk?”
Denon’s eyes tried to go black. It was stupid pushing him like this, but I felt the lack of sleep keenly, and I did have Glenn beside me. What was Denon going to do?
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